agricultural economics, worked for the Social Security Disability Determination Agency, North Dakota Child Support Enforcement Unit and as a loan officer for the First National Bank in Belfield, North Dakota. After leaving the bank in 1993, he began farming on his wife's family farm near Dickinson, North Dakota. He was a 40-year member of the Roosevelt Memorial Masonic Lodge, member of El Zagel Shrine and a past patron of Order of the Eastern Star. He lived in Dickinson.